Web part and widget enhancements in Kentico CMS 8
The workflow for widgets feature brings better supervision over website content, and the possibility to copy web parts/widgets between pages eases development in Kentico CMS 8.
Copying web parts/widgets
During website development, you often need to reuse components that are already configured on other pages (possibly with slight differences). In version 8, you can save time by the using copy/paste functionality of web parts and editor widgets.
You can access the copy/paste actions via the context menus of web parts or zones. Zones allow you to copy all child web parts. The paste action of zones adds the copied web parts to the end of the zone. Pasting through the action of a specific web part places the content directly below the given web part. Note that copying does not carry over the content inside layout web parts. The same functionality is also available for editor widgets.
Workflow for widgets
Editor widgets in version 8 behave as regular page content. This means that modifications of widgets are not saved immediately and users need to confirm changes via the save button. The content of editor widget zones is processed within the workflow process, so only published changes are displayed on the live site.
Because the behavior of editor widgets is different from previous versions, we recommend enabling the Prompt to save changes on exit setting in Site Manager -> Settings -> Content -> Content management to avoid losing changes accidentally.
There is one exception for content personalization and MVT variants of web parts or widgets. Variants aren’t considered as page content. When users create or modify a variant, the changes still apply immediately without saving the page. Likewise, variants are not included in the workflow process or the version history of pages.